Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday April 10, 2014 @09:07PM
from the protect-ya-neck dept.

ananyo (2519492) writes "A new UN report (link to data) details comprehensive country-by-country murder rates. Safest is Singapore, with just one killing per 480,000 people in 2012. In the world's most violent country, Honduras, a man has a 1 in 9 chance of being murdered during his lifetime. The Economist includes an intriguing 'print only interactive' (see the PDF) and has some tongue-in-cheek tips on how to avoid being slain: 'First, don't live in the Americas or Africa, where murder rates (one in 6,100 and one in 8,000 respectively) are more than four times as high as the rest of the world. Next, be a woman. Your chance of being murdered will be barely a quarter what it would be were you a man. In fact, steer clear of men altogether: nearly half of all female murder-victims are killed by their partner or another (usually male) family member. But note that the gender imbalance is less pronounced in the rich world, probably because there is less banditry, a mainly male pursuit. In Japan and South Korea slightly over half of all murder victims are female. Then, sit back and grow older. From the age of 30 onwards, murder rates fall steadily in most places.'"

What the UN report leaves out is one important factor in the US: about half of the perpetrators and victims of homicide are young African American males, completely out of proportion to their prevalence population; that's what accounts for most of the difference between US and other Western murder rates.

Gun control isn't going to help reduce those murder rates. Nor can those murder rates be explained through racism or bias in the justice system. Until politicians get serious and address this issue, African Americans are going to continue to get killed and locked up at a frightening rate. Unfortunately, our current president has been totally ineffective in doing anything about it.

When I was in US, I was very puzzled at the lack of empathy in public discourse towards prison rape. This was especially surprising since US leads the world in incarceration rate (3.5 times the supposedly âoeevery thing is a crimeâ Singapore) - so it is not even as if prison is reserved for the worst of the worst, with non-violent offenders frequently jailed, let alone the argument of punishing as sentenced and nothing more.

However, I don't understand your chain of reasoning. You argued that there is significant amount of rape when prisons are taken in account and then go on to say...

> Rape has the lowest occurrence rate in the US of any violent crimeâ.> Men are several times more likely to be KILLED.

âoe4.5 percent of the state and federal prisoners surveyed reported sexual victimization in the past 12 months. Given a national prison population of 1,570,861, the BJS findings suggest that in one year alone more than 70,000 prisoners were sexually abused.â

Rape is far, far more common compared to homicide, anywhere in the world.

> You can either listen to the gender issues folks, who make it sound like violence against women is a HUGE CRISIS, or you can read the BJS statistics. Women have been, and continue to be, a protected class in the US.

Yes, it has declined according to BJS. But the starting numbers are so high, that it is still considered a large problem.

Well, looks like I didn't have to say any of what I have to say. So I'll say this instead.

Look to Louisville, KY for how bad things can get when we try to be desperately politically correct or try to sweep it all under the rug. The "teens" have formed a gang among three+ schools and have exceeded the capacity of the police there. Oddly, only a small number of arrests have been made and of those they do not fit the profile of the "teens." Meanwhile, among the terror and chaos, the mayor essentially says "shelter in place" and "be unarmed" after the police leadership came out to the people saying they could not manage this situation and could not protect the public. The FBI has come forward to open all of this up and the truth is far worse than any previous reporting.

It's beyond control and media and others are STILL trying to cover this up. This is not the sort of thing which can simply be ignored. At some point, this sort of problem will be visible from space and people are going to have to ask some serious questions about all of this.

It all leads to this: ignoring crime and crimina tendencies only leads to its growth and intensification. Remember Trayvon? Turns out, he would be alive if only the school police were allowed to do their job instead of suppressing information about black criminals in their schools. Had he been referred to the local police after being caught with stolen articles and "burglary tools" he might have been detailed instead of getting into a violent confrontation which resulted in his death.

People can cook up all sorts of ways to spin this and you could be on every side of the issue. Some people generally feel "who cares!? let them kill each other off and stop trying to slow it down!" There seems to be evidence that this is precisely what is happening though the question of intent remains unanswered. And while stats say black people are far worse to each other than they are to other people, there is clear evidence that they are a danger to everyone even if it's not everyone equally.

Smart black people generally try to make a living for themselves, raise families and do all the right things and, individually, they are great people. But somehow, in numbers, things always seem to deteriorate.